Using Sociological Research In Educational System Design

Background Currently, one of the most difficult problems facing students, teachers and their parents in educational settings is the high and growing incidence of bullying. A plethora of materials has been developed to assist people to deal with bullying but a review of the literature reveals that most approaches are didactic in nature. That is they take the teacher’s, parent’s or designer’s (expert’s) authorative point of view and give instructions about the best ways to deal with issues (Damarin 1993). Situated learning needs to proceed from the point of view of the learner (Brown and Duguid 1993). Therefore an approach built upon the experiences of those people who actually bully and experience bullying should form the basis of a learning tool that helps students devise their own strategies for working out problems with bullying.